Daily Archives: October 16, 2018

"I'm not ruling out a change at the end of the season even though he (Malzahn) has a contract that has at least 38 million dollars in buyout money…from what I've been told, there's not much concern there when it comes to the money" – @bmarcellopic.twitter.com/jjhYUemqxz

That’s on the coaches, my friends. They simply weren’t prepared to set the defense in a timely manner when LSU went hurry-up. Maybe some of that was a change in the Tigers’ strategy, but it shouldn’t take Smart and Tucker that much time to adjust. Instead, we saw a confused defense that took us back to the fun times of 2013.

This is something that needs to be addressed in the next two weeks, because I’ve got the feeling Dan Mullen is taking notes.

“Some of us experienced players that were here for that last year can grab some of that stuff from last year,” junior running back Elijah Holyfield said.

Georgia rebounded and reeled off three straight wins to reach the College Football Playoff.

“We’re a new team,” Holyfield said. “We’ll go back to work similar to what we did last year.”

…

“It gives us a platform,” quarterback Jake Fromm said. “Something to kind of work off of. It helped us last year and hopefully it helps us this year.”

Two problems I see here. One, it’s an imperfect analogy, as Smart acknowledges.

“I mean this is very similar to last year, and we probably played better leading up to our loss last year,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said . “I didn’t think we had played as well this year. But we lost to a team (in) the West, on the road, everything’s still in front of us, what are we going to do from here? Because they define you by how you respond, not how you react. We’re going to respond the right way.”

The team played better leading to the Auburn loss than it has this season pre-Baton Rouge, so there was a standard then to bounce back to. That’s not the case in 2018, as the team has yet to turn in the kind of whole-game performance we all believe it’s capable of from a talent standpoint.

The second problem is that there’s a somewhat fine line between using what happened after last year’s regular season blowout loss as a road map to a better place now and simply using that experience as a crutch by assuming the magic will be there because… well, because. And if that sounds like an extension of the mindset that’s marked this Georgia team, so far, it’s only because it is.

The coaches have a couple of weeks to figure out that right response Kirby assures is there. Hope he can find the lever for that, and soon.

On the subject of paying athletes, the Wichita State AD said he believes athletes should be paid.

But it comes down to value, the sport, and how do you pay the players.

“You take a basketball team,” Boatright began. “One or two kids probably are marketable. Landry Shamet last year, he probably could’ve brought a little money. He had value, but you have kids on the end of the bench that don’t bring any value. Do you pay them the same? If so, why?”

All good questions. I suspect that the garbage coming out with the basketball fraud case is making athletic directors, or the realistic ones, anyway, face up to what a black market in high schoolers (and parents) says about the value of some student-athletes. You’d think it would behoove the NCAA and schools to get proactive with this, but who are we kidding here?